Thin content is the oldest quality problem in search and the one that keeps coming back, because the incentive that creates it never goes away: more URLs look like more coverage. This check asks whether a page earns its place — enough words, enough structure, enough that is not boilerplate. The scores land low, and a large part of that is category and tag pages, which exist for navigation and get judged as content.
Here is where that sits. The median SeoMods score is 36/100, which ranks it 21 of the 25 tools with a published benchmark by median. The ranking runs over the 25 tools on the main benchmark page; 1st is the highest median. The middle half of results falls between 26 and 56 — a band 30 points wide. That is wide: in this sample sites’ scores diverge markedly on this measure.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 5,179 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. The spread is wide and fairly even: in this sample sites land at very different levels on this measure.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | Thin Content |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 16% · 820 |
| 20–39 | 43% · 2,209 |
| 40–59 | 17% · 877 |
| 60–79 | 1% · 75 |
| 80–100 | 23% · 1,198 |
| Total runs | 5,179 |
The grade mix
The same data as letters: A+ 95–100, A 85–94, B 75–84, C 65–74, D 50–64 and F below 50.
Where does my score sit?
A low score is not automatically a problem; it is a question. Some pages are legitimately short — a contact page, a pricing table, a definition. What matters is whether a short page is short because that is the right length for it, or short because nobody finished it. The tool cannot tell those apart, and you can.
| Tool | P10 | P25 | Median | P75 | P90 | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thin Content | 10 | 26 | 36 | 56 | 87 | 46.5 | 0 | 100 |
A score from the Thin Content Checker can be read against the five values below. All of them are calculated from the scans in this benchmark: they place a SeoMods score within this sample, not in Google’s results.
| Percentile | Score | What it means for a score |
|---|---|---|
| P10 | 10 | About one scan in ten scored 10 or lower. Below it, a page is in the lowest tenth of this sample. |
| P25 | 26 | The edge of the bottom quarter. A score under 26 is below about three quarters of the scans. |
| Median | 36 | The middle of the sample: half the scans scored lower, half higher. A score of 36 is the typical result here. |
| P75 | 56 | Where the top quarter begins. A score of 56 or more is at or above about three quarters of the scans. |
| P90 | 87 | Where the top tenth begins. A score of 87 or more is among the highest 10% of scans in this sample. |
Percentiles describe the sites SeoMods scanned, not the whole web, and they apply to this tool only: the same number on another tool sits somewhere else.
The SeoMods checks most often unmet
The checks look past raw word count on purpose, because word count alone is the easiest number to game and the least informative. Text-to-HTML ratio catches pages that are mostly template. Subheadings and internal links catch pages with no internal organisation. Vocabulary variety catches text that repeats itself to reach a length.
| Check | Not met (share of scans) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Healthy text-to-HTML ratio | 84% | Partial |
| Substantial word count | 77% | Hard fail |
| Above the thin-content floor | 60% | Hard fail |
| Sub-headings organize the page | 29% | Partial |
| Internal links for context | 23% | Partial |
| Supporting media / lists | 22% | Partial |
| Varied vocabulary (not repetitive) | 4% | Partial |
The rate is the share of scans in which a SeoMods check was not met. It is SeoMods’ criterion, not Google’s assessment of these pages. “Hard fail” means the check’s full weight is deducted from the SeoMods score; “partial” means part of it.
The weakest areas
This tool groups its checks into categories. The chart below shows how often each category was the lowest-scoring one in a scan — which area is most often the weak link. It is not the average score in that category; it is how often it came last.
“Content Depth” was the weakest area in 81% of scans.
What to fix first
Before adding words, decide whether the page should exist. Merging three thin pages into one substantial one is almost always better than padding all three, and it concentrates whatever authority they had. If the page does deserve to exist, the fastest real improvement is usually structure: subheadings that break the content into answerable parts.
A typical scan passes 4.0 of 7 checks and leaves 3.0 open items behind. In this sample what brings a SeoMods score down is mostly not one large omission but accumulated small ones.
Run the Thin Content Checker on your own page
Month by month
This page adds every published month together. Underneath it, each month is frozen as an edition of its own whose figures are never edited again — which is the only reason two months can be set side by side at all. Below is the Thin Content Checker across the 2 published editions, with the combined figure in the last row of the table.
Between August 2026 and September 2026 the median held at 36, and the share of scans at 80 or above went from 28% to 21%. The two months do not measure the same sites — the September 2026 sample has about 3 times as many sites — so read the gap as a change in the cross-section measured, not as the same sites getting better or worse.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 36 | baseline | 28% | 2.9 | 1,437 |
| September 2026 | 36 | no change | 21% | 3.0 | 3,742 |
| All published months, combined | 36 | — | 23% | 3.0 | 5,179 |
Reading a monthly difference. Each month is a separate sample, and its size changes from month to month. A change in sample size can move a median and a distribution by itself, so a monthly difference should not be mistaken for a change in scores: it does not show that sites improved or got worse.
Which checks moved
Each check’s rate in the first edition that measured it, beside its rate in the latest. Moves under two points are marked as no change: these are independent monthly samples of a shifting set of sites, and a difference that small is not evidence that anything on the web changed.
| Check | Not met in August 2026 | Not met in September 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Above the thin-content floor Hard fail | 53% · August 2026 | 62% · September 2026 | +9 pp |
| Substantial word count Hard fail | 72% · August 2026 | 78% · September 2026 | +6 pp |
| Healthy text-to-HTML ratio | 87% · August 2026 | 84% · September 2026 | −3 pp |
| Sub-headings organize the page | 29% · August 2026 | 28% · September 2026 | no change |
| Internal links for context | 23% · August 2026 | 23% · September 2026 | no change |
| Supporting media / lists | 22% · August 2026 | 22% · September 2026 | no change |
| Varied vocabulary (not repetitive) | 4% · August 2026 | 4% · September 2026 | no change |
What this score does not measure
- It is not a Google ranking. A high score does not guarantee a better position, and a low one does not mean Google has penalised the page.
- It is not an organic traffic estimate. No click, impression or visit data goes into it.
- It does not represent the whole of the real user experience. What is measured is one URL’s HTML and server response at the moment of the scan.
About this benchmark. This benchmark is calculated from data on the sites SeoMods has scanned. The results do not necessarily represent all websites, or a random selection of them. The scores express SeoMods’ own measurement and scoring criteria; they are not ranking, quality, E-E-A-T or AI visibility scores issued by Google. Sample, anonymization and licence: the full methodology.
Frequently asked questions
How many words does a page need?
There is no threshold, and any specific number you have been given was made up. What actually matters is whether the page answers what it promised completely. A definition page might do that in eighty words; a comparison of six products cannot do it in eight hundred. The check flags short pages because shortness correlates with incompleteness, not because length is a target.
Are category and tag pages thin content?
They usually score as thin, and quite often they are — but not always. A category page that only lists links is genuinely thin; one with an introduction explaining what the category covers and why is a legitimate landing page. If a listing page has nothing to say for itself, the honest options are to write something or to stop it being indexed.
Is duplicate content the same as thin content?
They are different problems that frequently travel together. Thin means there is not enough substance; duplicate means the substance is also somewhere else. A page can be long and duplicated, or short and entirely original. This tool measures the first and only notices the second indirectly, through repetitive vocabulary.
What is a good score on the Thin Content Checker?
In this dataset the median SeoMods score is 36/100, so scoring 36 sits exactly in the middle of the sample. 56 is the start of the upper quartile and 87 or above is the top 10%; below 26 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 tools with a published benchmark have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing. They place a page among the sites SeoMods scanned; they say nothing about Google rankings.
Is the score from the Thin Content Checker issued by Google?
No. It is a benchmark score calculated against the check list SeoMods defined for this tool. A SeoMods check going unmet does not mean Google has penalised the page or ranked it lower.
Which SeoMods check goes unmet most often on the Thin Content Checker?
“Healthy text-to-HTML ratio”, which was not met in 84% of scans. The largest losses on the SeoMods score, though, come from the checks scored as hard fails — this tool has 2, the most common being “Substantial word count” at 77%.
Questions that govern the whole series — how the sample is collected, how sites are anonymized, how often the figures are refreshed — are answered in the methodology on the hub.
Using this data
The figures, tables and charts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; the only condition is a link back to this page. Suggested citation: SeoMods — Thin Content Checker benchmarks, 2 October 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/thin-content-checker. If you need to cite by date, use the September 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.